New Doubts About EVs
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 06:57PMTwo new reports on electric vehicles raise doubts about the ability of electric vehicles to help lower CO2 emissions until the world moves away from coal-based electric generation.
In fact, a study by researchers from Tsinghua University (China) and Argonne National Laboratory (US) found that a large-scale conversion to EVs in China could actually increase carbon emissions, compared to internal combustion and hybrid drives. SO2 and NOx emissions also increase in China with increased use of electric vehicles, although the conversion would decrease the use of oil. Coal-based power dominates the Chinese electric grid, accounting for over 95% of electric generation in some regions and a large majority overall.
Considering that vehicle use in China is expected to exceed that in the US by the middle of the century, this electric vehicle concern is an important one. And it is not just an issue in China.
A report by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering finds that in order for electric vehicles to have a big effect on climate change the grid in Britain needs to move away from coal towards non-carbon power sources, such as nuclear, wind and wave. As the report puts it, “EVs and PHEVs (plug-in hybrids) can only be as ‘green’ as the electricity used to charge their batteries.”
With almost 70% of US electricity coming from fossil fuels (and most of that from coal) the same is true in the US. Simply converting to electric vehicles does not solve emissions problems. Energy needs to become much greener and vehicles must become way more efficient.
Like 100 mpg. The Automotive X Prize is meant to spur breakthrough innovations in auto efficiency and it could not be happening at a better time. Edison2 believes that platform efficiency (low weight, low aerodynamic drag) is the key, making any power source more efficient. Electric vehicles could very well be a desirable future of the automobile, when the grid is no longer dependent on carbon, and an electric car built on Very Light Car principles would use less electricity.
In the meantime we simply need cars that use very little energy, yet are functional, safe and affordable. Like the Very Light Car.
Reader Comments (10)
Good post. One other important fact is that in the United States well over 50% of electricity demand is from electric motors. The current grid, so we are led to believe, is greatly stressed in peak usage months. Is adding a substantial number of PHEV vehicles to this infrastructure really beneficial to everyone, or just to those whom believe they are doing "good" for the environment by shifting the source emissions to the power generating plant?
That's a good point to bring up. What is interesting to me is that, generally speaking, all of the life forms on the planet, ultimately get their energy from the sun. If this has been true for billions of years of proof that nothing is more powerful or efficient, than it makes sense that a truly advanced and industrialized society would also figure out how to capture our machines' energy from the sun. Either directly by photovoltaic cells, solar boilers, etc., or indirectly by photosynthesis to generate bio-fuels, the sun is the most constant, and widely available power source. In the end, I'm sure both ways will be needed since fuels have a much higher shelf life than rechargeable batteries. Also, one more thing since we're on the holistic subject. Cars aren't the only ones guilty of carbon dioxide emissions as much as people think. Houses still need a lot more engineering behind them for increased efficiency. What's funny to me is how all houses of today are built above ground, and yet thousands of years ago, cavemen lived during an ice-age, basically under-ground at a constant 60 + degrees, and we still haven't taken the hint.
Right you are about this, except it is much worse than you seem to recognize. It has been hard to convince people that the real question is, "What actually happens if I plug-in?"
The response of the electric production system, altogether, is constrained so that the effect of plugging in a new load, whatever it might be, is to cause operation from available capacity. That cuts out all the really good stuff which is producing at its maximum anyway. After that, the choice from which to draw power is based on which type of available capacity is cheapest to operate. Guess what? That is almost always coal. So the real source of power for the EV is 100% coal. Yes, there is an exception if you run home and charge your EV at a time when unplanned, abrupt peaking happens, and this situation is handled best by fast responding natural gas turbine systems. These are especially expensive to run so whenever planning can be done to eliminate this, that is attempted.
We might see some change in this if a strict climate bill passes that puts a strong penalty on coal, so that there might more often be a reason to use natural gas. That outcome of course assumes that natural gas will stay at a low price, which seems very unlikely when demand pressure greatly increases. I suspect that Boone Pickens is already chuckling in anticipation of this outcome.
But the edison2 approach is the right way to beat this, because it simply reduces the amount of energy needed, from whatever source. Other than regenerative braking, done right, there is not much advantage of the EV over a car with an efficient gasoline engine. Since coal will drive the EV, the efficiency of the gasoline engine can be somewhat, not a lot, less than that of the coal fired power plant engine.
The biggest problem I have had with the Xprize has been that their way of figuring MPGe ignores the power plant and gives the EV a three to one advantage over any car that carries its own engine. (See all my haranguing with John Shore on the xprize blog.) You may have a much better product and still will be made to look less "green" on their MPGe scale.
After that, they do at least account for the power production process in the CO2 calculation, but they still get that wrong because they like to pretend there is a "mix" of electric sources that would respond to the EV load. That is also not true, as I tried to explain above in this comment. So the EV gets an unfair boost here as well, though not quite as bad as with the MPGe nonsense.
These reports sound like their authors are shills for the status quo.
Of course electricity is only as clean as its source. Wind, solar and nat gas with an appropriate grid for population centers must be linked with batter tech and PV efficiency following Moores law.
Making oil/petrol, irrelevant for personal and commercial vehicle transport is the catalyst of a real global future.
Paul Appleton,
Unfortunately, Moore's Law does not apply to whatever one might like to see improve. PV efficiency might even be said to follow an Anti-Moore Law. Significant progress has been made with PV to get to a lower dollars per watt of maximum output. But the cadmium teluride devices are quite a lot less efficient. Though perhaps you were not thinking in energy terms, and really meant dollar efficiency. Even dollar efficiency comes in fits and starts, and often turns out to be disappointing. For example, cadmium teluride, though cheaper than other approaches, requires greater area of panels, and this ends up costing more in panel and installation. It also makes it harder to fit them on a roof top such that sun exposure is not degraded by various shadowing things, like trees for example.
Perhaps a more important discussion would be about use of natural gas for electric power generation. Please note that the extended reserves of natural gas that have been proclaimed depend very much on the market price, and forecasts of this cause the exploration and use of expensive processes that created the estimates of reserves that we are now accepting. A month or two ago, in response to lower futures prices, Chesapeake reduced their assets directed toward natural gas exploration and put them back into oil work. Remember that a million BTU from coal costs from $1 to $2 and a million BTU from natural gas has been running $4 to $5. Optimism about reserves came about during a period when natural gas futures a year or two out were running $7 to $8. Whatever you hope for in the future, you should consider the reality of these prices. I am concerned that efforts to disfavor the use of coal as the backbone fuel of our energy based economy, though that has obvious benefits, would have more impact on our economy than we will be able to stand.
Beyond that, we also have to realize that if we force our producers to use natural gas instead of coal, the projected number of years of reserves that we hear about will be cut to about a third of that projected time.
We could also be very shocked to realize that a large scale shift to plug-ins will significantly increase the draw on electricity and thus increase the use of natural gas as discussed above. Now the available natural gas reserves could be down to the dangerous short term situation again.
Things seem to come out better if we reduce our expectations for electric powered cars and concentrate more on reducing energy needed to drive cars, wherever that energy might come from.
Does anyone think that a post by a gasoline powered vehicle competitor might be biased against EVs? What class, trashing a competitor. Don't look now, but you have dirtied yourself. And the title, "New doubs about EVs" Since when does coal have anything to do with EVs? Nice try. How about gas vehicles with high sulfur oil and no emission standards for comparison. They have a point. There is so much oil in the Gulf now, that you do not need a fuel tank to cross it. Just skim it up. Didn't this car spin out in the lane change maneuver? Does it look like *&&*&*&&? One parking lot dent and the efficiency is gone, not to mention the whole car. Hey, I thought EPRI and every other study on EVs showed they have the least GHG impact.
Wow, well I've been reading a lot on this page getting new perspectives. Thank you Thomas, Paul, and Jim. It's really inspired me to do a little research on how all this stuff like coal, natural gas, crude oil, and biodiesel are formed in the first place. It turns out that all of them come as waste products from dead organic matter that no life form could readily use, and somehow enough energy is left we can use it for energy production. So, maybe in the end, fuels aren't as bad as people think. I am not saying we are fine where we are at, but perhaps the biggest enemy is the speed at which we are using fuels currently. One more thing, Miss Eve Green, no matter how up-set you might be, please remember that all of us on this page and watching the competition, know that in the end we are all on the same team.
Eve,
It's great to see that you are energized about these topics - much better than ambivalence! There is more than one viable path to "green". Please let me try to elaborate, in case you haven't been exposed to some of these background facts .
Here are those details as clearly and unbiased as I can lay them out. Caution: there is a bunch of hype out there (even from proclaimed “experts”) promoting EV’s as today’s “solution” to the energy problem, but this is not necessarily true. The 3 main things which are important regarding future car technology are:
1. Reduce the amount of energy used via higher efficiency
2. Reduce or eliminate dependence on fossil fuels
3. Reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions (closely related to #2).
For “urban” driving with lots of starts-and-stops (and short range), EV’s and hybrids have good efficiency due to regenerative braking. Another situation where EV’s make perfect sense are people who cover their roofs in solar panels, and charge their EV’s directly (without using the grid). These are two niches where EV’s make sense today. If a person does any long-range highway driving or “mixed” cycles (such as driving between distant cities or long trips on weekends) EV’s are not a great choice, and use about the same amount of energy as conventional cars (but the power comes out of a socket, of course).
An EV is only as “green” as the power grid which feeds it. The energy which comes out of the socket is generated at power plants, the great majority of which are fossil fuel burning or (worse) coal burning. In the USA, about 60% of power is generated with coal, in the UK is about 33%. So, because EV cars use just as much total energy, they burn nearly as much fossil fuel (in the power plant) and create nearly as much greenhouse gas (from the power plant) as a modern efficient fueled car.
Sometime in the future, after the power grid is upgraded to a high percentage of “green” power sources (wind, solar, debatably nuclear, etc.) then the power for EV’s would also be “green”. It will unfortunately be many years before this enabling transformation can take place. Therefore, buying an EV today does little or nothing to help reduce fossil fuel usage or help the environment. All of the negatives of EV’s (higher cost and weight, shorter range, long recharge cycles, expensive battery replacement) won’t be worth it until the “grid is greener” and also able to handle the increased load of millions of cars recharging. Hopefully by then the battery technology will be better as well, since even today’s lithium batteries add 500 – 1000 pounds of weight to a car, which hurts performance, handling and efficiency.
Therefore, while EV’s might be the “best choice” in the future, they are certainly NOT a great choice now for most people. Lastly, there are alternatives that can make fueled cars equivalently green. If you burn bioethanol (the Edison2 car is burning E85) or biodiesel, then no fossil fuels are used and no NET greenhouse gasses are emitted. There are also other potential “fuels of the future” being investigated that can be synthesized via solar power. See:
www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/S2P
www.zerofuel.org/uploads/ZeroFueldownload_1_.pdf
These future fuels would be 100% fossil fuel and greenhouse gas free, yet retain the benefits of the existing fuel distribution infrastructure (tanker trucks, gas stations) and avoid most of the weaknesses of battery powered EV’s. I think everyone would agree that waiting 8 hours to recharge an EV is much less convenient than 5 minutes to fill-up your fuel tank at a filling station.
So, I’ll be happy when #1,2, and 3 are all solved by mankind – whether it be with EV’s or not. I just wanted to point out that EV’s are not a panacea today, and also that the near-term priority should probably to be transform the power grid to greener sources first, then worry about possibly converting to EV’s. In the near term, efforts to develop super-efficient conventionally fueled (or bio-fueled) vehicles are probably the most practical approach. As a parting thought, one could change an uber-efficient car such as the Edison2 to an EV (or any other kind of engine technology) - and reap the great benefits of low weight and low drag, which are universal “virtues” of efficient car design.
Hope this was helpful,
Kevin
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If an electric vehicle is charged directly from the grid, its real emissions are variable dependent on the emissions from the electricity generation. If the vehicle is charged directly from a renewable energy source, pv arrays for example, the emissions can be virtually zero. That is the case for the three Volts owned by members of our group, Renewable Taos. Last week we hit 21F below zero one morning. The Volt warmed up with the gas engine and got around 125 mpgin mountain driving that day. On warmer days it runs on energy from the sun. The exceptions are longer trips, and almost all of those, even from remote Taos, would be within the range of the electric Edison. Electric has marginal value from the standpoint of CO2 emissions if it is not powered by energy from a renewable source.